about people’s intended meaning, their assumption, purposes, and the kinds of actions that they are performing when they speak.
2. Speech Acts
Austin 1965:95 defines speech act as the actions performed in by saying something. In Levinson’s book 1983:236, Austin states that there are three basic
senses which relate to the utterance uttered by a person. First is locutionary act which produces meaningful linguistics expression. Second is illocutionary act.
This kind of act is the making of a statement, offer, promise, etc. in uttering a sentence, by virtue of the conventional force associated with it or with its
performative paraphrase. Third is perlocutionary act which is bringing about of effects on the audience by means of uttering the sentence.
From those three kinds of act performance, illocutionary acts is the act which is most discussed among the linguists because when someone utters a
sentence with a certain sense and reference, they will perform a certain illocutionary act. Related to this theory, Searle in Huang’s book 2007:106-108
classifies five basic categories of speech acts that one can perform in speaking as shown in the following:
a. Declaratives
Searle in Huang’s book 2007:108 describes declaration are those kinds of speech act that effect immediate changes in some current state of affair, for the
example: excommunicating, declaring war, christening, firing from employment. The examples of the sentence which is consisting of declaration are:
i. Priest: “I now pronounce you husband and wife.” Yule, 1996:53 ii. Referee: “You’re out” Yule, 1996:53
b. Representatives
According to Searle in Huang’s book, this type of speech act commits the speaker to something’s being the case, to the truth of the expressed proposition.
Moreover, Yule 1996:53 also states that representatives are those kinds of speech acts that state what the speaker believes to be the case or not.
Examples: i. The earth is flat. Yule, 1996:53
ii. Chomsky didn’t write about peanuts. Yule, 1996:53
c. Expressives
Searle in Huang’s book 2007:107 describes expressives as speech act which have the function of expressing the speaker’s psychological attitude or state
in the speaker such as joy, sorrow, and likes or dislikes. The examples of this speech act are:
i. I’m really sorry Yule, 1996:53 ii. Congratulations Yule, 1996:53
d. Directives
Directive speech act attempts by the speaker to get the addressee to do something. These cases include advices, commands, orders, questions, and
requests. This Searle’s statement is also supported by Alston 2000:97 who says that directive speech act are typically intended to “direct”, or “influence” the
behavior of the addressee. The examples of directive speech acts are as follows: i. Turn the TV down. Huang, 2007:107
ii. Could you lend me a pen, please? Yule, 1996:54
This category of speech act becomes the focus of this research. The writer tries to analyze the directive speech acts used by Miranda Priestly in order to
know the leadership style of Miranda. All about directives speech acts theory will be discussed after this classification of speech acts.
e. Commissives
